Verbal hallucinations in normals, I: People who hear 'voices'

Two studies are reported that describe the phenomena of verbal hallucinations in the general population and test two explanations of those reports. Subjects were 198 male and 387 female college students who completed a verbal hallucination questionnaire plus one or more additional questionnaires. We found that a large minority reported hallucinations and that nearly half reported having them at least once a month. The present data indicated that these reports were not related to four measures of social conformity. Neither were they related to measures of overt, or incipient, symptoms of psychopathology. We have concluded that the majority of these reports are generally veridical accounts of conscious experience in normal individuals.